by D. N. Hoxa
“Tif?” I asked.
He cleared his throat, before he turned to the other.
“Shut the hell up, Lance.”
I wanted to roll my eyes. I wanted him to tell me their names, not tell him to shut up.
“No, he’s right. He should show us his face,” the woman said. Her hair was darker than Lance’s, but a couple of inches shorter. She was beautiful.
“What’s your name?” If Tif wasn’t going to tell me, I had to ask myself.
“You don’t know my name?” she said, raising her thick brows. “You gave it to me.”
“Of course he knows your name, Penny. He’s just making sure—”
“It’s fine, Tif,” I said before it got even more awkward, and took the mask off.
They looked like they would’ve gasped if they had been breathing when they saw my face.
“It’s you,” Penny whispered.
“Doyen, you’re…” Lance said, like he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
“Yes, I’m here. But don’t call me Doyen. Or Hammer. It’s Mask now,” I said.
“Okay,” they both said at the same time.
“Thanks for coming.”
It was the wrong thing to say. They looked even more confused than before. If I’d known what Hammer had said to them the last time he saw them, this wouldn’t have been hard.
“You called for us,” Penny said.
“Yes, I did. Good job finding them, Tif.” And that was another wrong thing to say, because Tif had no idea whether to look away from me or hug me. So I continued. “I called you here, because I need your help.”
“Okay,” the three of them said.
“Uh…” God, this was so weird. I should’ve just asked Bugz or Dublin how Doyens spoke to their vampires. “I’m going to need you to help me find…” was I supposed to say Morta’s name already? Shit. “… find someone, and then do…” oh, hell, I was making a fool of myself.
The next second Bugz walked into the room.
“You asshole,” she hissed when she saw the vampires in front of me.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Tif, Lance, Penny,” she said, and nodded at all of them. They weren’t surprised to see her there so I guessed they knew her. “We’re going to need you to come with us, help us find Morta Fox, the girl with the beating heart, then help us stop Chandra from blowing up the world.” So I was supposed to tell them. “And you’re not to tell anyone about this.”
“You’re not my Doyen, Bugz,” Penny said.
“Nope, but apparently he is.” Bugz pointed her thumb at me.
“Does this mean you’ll help?” I asked her instead.
“Yeah, I’ll help,” she mumbled. “But after this, we’re even.”
“Deal,” I said, grinning, before I turned to the others. “We’re going to do exactly what Bugz said we’ll do.”
“I’m on duty,” Lance said.
“I’m not.” Penny shrugged.
“Me, neither.” Tiff grinned.
“What duty?” I asked Lance.
“I was supposed to get intel on the RONY wall,” he said.
“What kind of intel?” Bugz asked. “Did Mohg send you?”
But Lance turned to me without a word, so I asked the same questions.
“The group before ours left marks on it and some things around it. Our group was supposed to check if everything was as they’d left them.”
“To check if the humans had noticed anything,” Bugz said in wonder. Exactly my thoughts. “He’s testing the humans to see if they notice us when we’re around them. If they notice things we put around them.”
“And what did you find?” I asked Lance.
“Nothing yet. I was on my way when Tif found me,” he said. “Do I have to go back now?”
Did he? I turned to Bugz, who rolled her eyes. I shrugged. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
“No, you don’t. Your Doyen’s orders top those of Mohg.”
I looked at her in suspicion. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. If you had given them to him to use, that would’ve been another story.”
“Don’t you know?” Penny asked me.
“Uh…” I really needed to talk to Bugz alone. “Yeah, I know.”
“Of course he knows,” Tif said. “But he has never been a Doyen, has he? He turned us, but he never stayed with us.”
Thank God for that vampire.
“It’s been so long that I forgot,” I said. “I can’t even remember when or where I turned you.” It was supposed to be a joke but nobody laughed.
“1991, Boston,” Penny said.
“1986, Paris,” Lance said.
“1999, Florida,” Tif said.
“No, I knew. It was just a figure of speech.” Fucking hell, I was terrible at this.
“Can I talk to you outside for a second?” Bugz said before she disappeared out the door without waiting for my reply.
“Right. So, uh…just wait for me here. I’ll be right back,” I said to them, and they all nodded. Lance and Penny looked confused as fuck, but at least Tif was grinning.
I followed Bugz out the building we were in and onto the roof of the one across. I had to take the stairs since it was almost twenty stories high.
“You are way out of your league here,” Bugz said.
“I know!” I said. “Did you hear me? Fucking hell, it’s pathetic.”
She flinched. “Yeah. It kind of was.”
“It’s all your fault,” I said, fighting a grin.
“How the hell is it my fault?”
“Because you disappeared for three days. Who else was going to tell me how to act like a Doyen?” She looked away from me. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “But then I heard you talking to them, and I couldn’t let you drown in misery like that.”
I laughed before I realized her words. “You were here?”
“The whole time,” she said, nodding.
“What the hell, Bugz? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I needed to think.”
“I didn’t even hear you or see you.” And that was starting to worry me.
“Don’t beat yourself over it. You’re not even one year old. These things take time. Have you seen Tif?” she said.
I nodded. “I feel bad for him. Hammer should’ve kept him around long enough to teach him some stuff.”
“He’s still young. He’ll learn the way Lance and Penny did. By the way, they’re pretty good,” she said.
I nodded. They did seem more experienced than Tif. Probably because they were older.
“So, Hammer was really a Doyen. Son of a bitch. He never told me.”
“If it’s worth anything, I promise to tell you if I ever become a Doyen,” I said.
She smiled. “You already are. And you need to start acting like one.”
“I really do.” I squeezed my eyes shut in embarrassment. I’d behaved like an ass back there.
“You treat them like they’re your servants. You never say thanks or please to your vampires. Ever. You don’t ask them about anything, just order them around. This should do for now. I’ll tell you more when we have more time,” she said.
“But why? Who came up with the rules?” They seemed pretty stupid. The three of them already looked like they were willing to do anything for me. Why make it harder on them?
Bugz grinned. “To make ourselves feel powerful, of course. Vampires have a very strong superiority complex. You’ll develop yours soon enough.”
“Okay. No please or thank you. No asking, just ordering. Sounds easy enough.” I nodded.
“And you were definitely not supposed to ask for their names.” Bugz rolled her eyes.
“I figured that. Do you believe now that Morta was right?”
She flinched at the mention of her name. “I believed you the first time,” she mumbled.
“Don’t tell
me you’ve prepared a bunker, too.”
“I prepared my bunker a century ago, together with you,” she whispered.
“Oh.” Well, what could I have said to that? “I’m very thankful that you’ll help me, Bugz.”
She laughed. “Don’t thank other vampires, either. Everything we do for each other is a favor. We don’t say thank you. We put ourselves in debt.”
“Right. We should leave, right now.” I flinched. “Though I have no idea where to even start looking for her.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find her. But we can’t go looking without even a trail. I suggest I take you and yours back to one of your homes that’s nearby. If we run fast, we can make it tonight. You have a Communicator there. I can use it to ask around,” Bugz said.
“I have a home?”
“Four that I know of,” Bugz said. “We should get going.”
She walked back into the building and down the stairs, and I followed. “What’s a Communicator?”
She told me I’d see for myself soon.
We were on the way five minutes later, with Tif, Penny, and Lance in tow. They didn’t object when we told them we were going to one of Hammer’s homes, but they didn’t look happy about it, either. Except for Tif. Bugz said that it didn’t matter. They weren’t supposed to be happy. They weren’t supposed to be anything—just obey.
We arrived at the two-story house fifteen minutes before the sun rose. The place was perfectly hidden between broken and burnt buildings around it. But it was new. Almost perfectly new.
“Penny can take the room upstairs. Me and the boys will sleep down here,” Bugz said.
The place was not too big, but fully furnished. It had a living room, a kitchen, and two rooms upstairs. One was Hammer’s. Bugz took me to it while the others explored the place.
“Wow,” I breathed, as I looked at the huge bed in front of me. I’d never seen anything like it so well kept.
“Yeah. You have poison under it and more in the basement,” Bugz said. “We’ll talk more tomorrow night.”
“Wait, why didn’t you take the other room?”
It was at the end of the hallway. I saw the inside when Penny opened the door to get in. It had a bed, too.
“No, thanks. I’m not sleeping in there.” Bugz flinched.
“Why not? It has a bed.”
“A bed Morta slept in.”
“Morta was here?” All of a sudden, the house looked different in my eyes.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Bugz said, and disappeared down the stairs.
I closed the door to my own room. The sun was minutes away from rising, so I barely had time to look around.
There were all kinds of things, small objects scattered all over the room. A lighter, frames with pictures of places I couldn’t remember, a small, round clock that didn’t work. In the bedside drawer, I even found a sewing kit with rusted needles. Under it was a book in French. I couldn’t read a single sentence for the life of me, and just as I was about to put it back where I’d found it, something caught my eye. The drawer was broken so I couldn’t open it all the way. I reached my hand inside and grabbed a square piece of plastic.
It fit perfectly in my palm. It was black and grey, plastic and metal, with a button on each side in the very middle. Nothing was written on it that I could see. I pressed the first button, and nothing happened. When I pressed the other, a red light blinked in the middle of it so fast, it could’ve very well been my imagination. I pressed the buttons, again and again, but nothing happened.
I put it in my pocket and crashed on the soft bed, closed my eyes, and thought of Morta Fox until unconsciousness claimed me.
XXVII
The Communicator was a weird cylinder that kept spinning, mounted on top of a bunch of symbols Bugz pressed for more than fifteen minutes while I looked around me in amazement. Cars. So many cars were under the house.
I’d seen cars. The streets were filled with them on all sides, but they were either broken, burnt, or both. I’d never before seen one moving, and now I had thirteen beautiful cars in front of me. Bugz told me Hammer had put them all there. He’d taken them from all parts of the world for his own private collection. I could definitely believe that. If I’d known cars looked like this, I’d have made my own collection long ago.
“Can we take one out?” I asked Bugz.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “These are just for show. They’re slow and make a lot of noise.”
“That one doesn’t look slow,” I said, pointing at a red beast.
“They’re not slow, but we’re much faster,” Bugz said. “And we want to keep off the radar, not notify every vampire around that we’re passing.”
“That sucks.” I wanted to drive one so badly.
“Let’s go talk to the others,” Bugz said.
“You’re done?” I asked just as she turned the lights out and disappeared up the stairs of the basement.
“I sent word to two of my contacts. If they don’t say anything by tomorrow, we’ll be on our own,” Bugz said.
That wasn’t as bad as it sounded. “We’ll find her,” I said. I knew we would. We just had to look…where?
“I know. Her heart beats. It’s not going to be that hard.” The others were in the living room, but Bugz waved for me to follow her into the kitchen. The others would hear whatever we said, but she didn’t seem worried. “What’s the plan?” she said.
“The plan?”
“Yes. What’ll happen after we find her?”
I sat down on the only chair in the room. “I’m going to tell her…you know,” I said, scratching my head. My hair had grown too much. It was distracting.
Bugz rolled her eyes. “Yes, you’ll tell her that you’re Hammer. Then?”
“Then?”
“Yes, M. What happens then?”
To be honest, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I just wanted to find her, tell her that I was Hammer, the man she loved, then…watch as she fell into my arms and hugged me.
Shit.
I stood up. “Then we’re going to figure out a way to stop Mohg and Chandra,” I said. “They’re in Brazil.”
“Chandra is in Brazil. Mohg is in Long Island,” Bugz said.
Suddenly, it all dawned on me. I was completely unprepared for what I was doing. Going after a fucking army? What the hell was I thinking?
I was thinking of Morta Fox. I’d been so caught up with thoughts of how she’d react when I told her the truth. Every possible outcome was perfectly vivid in my head. And I hadn’t even thought about how I was going to stop Mohg.
“Maybe she has a plan?”
“Probably. But you need one, too, don’t you think?” Bugz said.
I sighed and fell back on the chair. “Damn it.”
“We have tonight to waste, so don’t worry about it. Just promise me one thing. Stop thinking about her, and start thinking about what you’ve put yourself into,” she said.
I didn’t think that was possible, but I nodded anyway. Before she left to go to the others, she added: “How did you know that Chandra is in Brazil?”
“I met some vampires in Florida.”
I hated to admit it, but I missed Drag and Zuke, even El. How did the other vampires even make it? How did they all look so cold, so detached from everything and everyone? Maybe it was time. Maybe, in time, I’d learn how to control myself and stop feeling so strongly about everything.
“You did?” Bugz faced me again. “Who were they?”
“Just three vampires. They came all the way here from Brazil, looking for Morta.”
“What for?” Bugz said without missing a beat.
“They had a message for her from someone who claimed to have known Morta from before. She told them she was Morta’s relative, too.”
“What?”
“Yeah—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she hissed.
“I’m telling you now.”
She hadn’t really given me enough time to tell her eve
rything.
“Who was she? Who sent the message?”
“I don’t know. Someone named Alexa,” I said. “I helped them find Morta. I talked to her, told her about the message.”
“Alexa? I know Alexa. She was already a vampire when my Doyen turned me. She can’t possibly be Morta’s relative.”
“No, Alexa was the boys’ Doyen. She gave them to another vampire. The one that sent them here,” I explained.
“Well, what are we waiting for then? Morta must be on her way there,” Bugz said.
“She said she would think about it. I’m not sure she’ll go,” I said, and she laughed.
“Obviously you don’t know anything about her.” I don’t know why that brought shivers down my back. “Of course she’s going! She’s the most curious vampire in the world.”
“She is?”
“Yes, you dumbass. We need a map,” she said, and disappeared.
I found her with the others in the living room, and handed her the map Dublin had given me the first time we met. I was supposed to follow it to Canada to go see his Doyen. Fortunately, I never went.
“So we came all the way here for nothing?” I said. We’d lost too much time.
“No, not for nothing. We’re going to need weapons, poison, and blood.”
“Yes, I really need blood,” Penny said. The others nodded. “And you need a haircut,” she said to me.
I smiled with my lips pressed. I really did.
“Okay, we have to head for Mexico, through Columbia…” she pointed at the map.
“Can’t we go through Cuba?” It would be much faster that way.
“There’s water here. We won’t be able to make it undetected. Mohg has the whole area around Cuba under surveillance. We have to go around.”
“That’s a long way to go without feeding,” Lance said.
“There’ll be humans around,” I said.
Drag, Zuke and El had made it all the way here. They’d taken the long way around, too. That was why they came through Georgia to get to Florida, and found me there.
“How long are we talking about?” Tif asked.
“We need to figure out where we’re going first. Brazil is huge. They could be anywhere.”